Teen takes spotlight at town hall

For our town hall at William Penn Senior High School Tuesday night, we had our Stay in School experts, Bob Woods from the United Way and York County Judge John Uhler, to talk about truancy and keeping kids in school. We had representatives from York City School District to talk about the challenges of keeping city kids engaged in school.

That much was all planned.

Then Ginia Moorehead grabbed the spotlight. Ginia, a senior at William Penn, was the first one to raise her hand during the Q&A session at the end of the meeting. She marched to the front of the auditorium, took the microphone and spoke from the heart for close to five minutes. She told her own personal stay-in-school story, how she went from repeating grades and not caring about school to being excited about her classes and proud of her 3.6 GPA.

She said she has started a group at William Penn, called T.E.E.N. (Teaching, Empowering and Encouraging the New generation), so that she can pass on the lessons she learned to help other young girls going through the same situations.

Ginia was impressive. She put a human face on the issue of keeping kids in school. She showed the importance of doing more to help more kids get themselves turned around. By speaking up, she spoke for the hundreds of kids around the county who struggle with societal pressures and problems of all kinds.

And her message was simple: We are worth saving.

- Dan Fink

Documentary chronicles one town's truancy fight

I've been reading a fair amount about truancy lately, and I came across this documentary by KVIE-TV, a public television station in Sacremento, Calif. "High School Dropouts" was part of the station's "ViewFinder" public affairs program, and it looked at the problems truancy and dropouts cause in one California community and that community's attempt to deal with it.

YorkCounts is in the middle of a series of town halls that focus on this subject. We're trying to throw a light on the same problems that exist in York County, by focusing on the United Way's Stay in School Report, and to tell folks that there are programs that exist that can help keep kids in school. The next town hall is 6:30 p.m. Jan. 19 at William Penn Senior High School.

The numbers in the United Way report are compelling, but they don't quite tell the story the way this film from California does. If you want to see the human toll that truancy has on a community, watch this video. Then come to our town hall and hear what we can do right now to help parents, challenge students, engage businesses and make all of our public schools better.

- Dan Fink

Survey to bring vital data on youth

From today's York Dispatch:

York County students are being surveyed through Nov. 13 to gather data about their behavior, their attitudes and their knowledge about alcohol, tobacco, drugs and violence.
The Pennsylvania Youth Survey will be administered to students in sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grades in 15 of the county's 16 school districts and several charter schools.

The article says this will be the first time so many York County schools will participate in the survey. Why is that important? More students responding means more and better data, and that will help local officials better identify issues, assess programs and target spending needs.

In the bigger picture, this is a key part of the effort to reduce gang violence and youth crime and the related issues of truancy and school dropout rates. YorkCounts will hold a series of town halls on that very subject, starting with the first event in Dover on Nov. 9. The town halls, "Kids, Truancy and a County at Risk," will focus on the YorkCounts-United Way's Stay in School Report.

- Dan Fink